A protest against racial insensitivity at the University of Missouri reached a tipping point Saturday when at least 30 black football players said they wouldn’t play until the university president goes.

The protest is over. President Tim Wolfe resigned Monday under growing pressure, on and off campus.

A day earlier, Wolfe had promised to review the complaints and impose a plan by April — adding another six months or more to his already slow response.

Wolfe’s resignation is good for the university. But it remains to be seen whether the critical issues will change for the better.

The protests had been percolating for months, with black student groups complaining about racial slurs and other slights on the mostly white, 35,000-student flagship campus of Missouri’s four-college system. Incidents included taunting and verbal attacks against black students; a slow and indifferent response by the university; and a swastika drawn in human excrement on the wall of a dormitory bathroom.

The athletes got involved after an incident about a month ago when a group of black students surrounded Wolfe’s car during a homecoming parade. Wolfe did not get out of his car to talk with the students or hear their complaints. Instead, he had campus police remove the students.

The “Mizzou” players’ walkout provided the spark that the homecoming confrontation did not — probably because the players’ walkout added financial leverage — the only true leverage available to the students in this dispute.

The Tigers are scheduled to play Brigham Young University on Saturday at Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. One-day rental of a 79,451-seat stadium isn’t cheap. Canceling that game could have cost the university more than $1 million.

It’s significant that the striking black players had the support of their coaches and white teammates.

“The Mizzou Family stands as one. We are united. We are behind our players,” Head Coach Gary Pinkle tweeted Sunday, along with a photo of the entire team, locked arm in arm.

Later Sunday, the coach and athletic director released a statement that the entire team would not practice until Wolfe was gone.

There’s no doubt that Pinkle’s decision to back his players influenced many others to get behind the protest. He and his staff put their own jobs on the line, along with their players. All are under contract with the university — the players for their scholarships and the coaches for their jobs.

They could not have made this decision lightly. But they made it as a team — that’s what teams are supposed to do.

Missouri is not unique in issues of racial insensitivity. There has been an increase of racially motivated incidents reported this fall on campuses across the United States.

Fresh in everyone’s memory are murders of nine black churchgoers by a self-declared white supremacist on June 17 in Charleston, S.C., and the Aug. 9, 2014, killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Mo.

Although Wilson eventually was cleared of any wrongdoing, the incident sparked long running racial tensions and a nationwide discussion about tolerance toward racial discrimination. The Charleston slayings set off a running debate over display of the Confederate flag.

These dialogues have fanned the flames of justice, along with a backlash of prejudice and hate.

What happens next will be crucial. Wolfe, a businessman with no academic experience, needs to be replaced with someone more adept at addressing the needs of a campus community — who can balance freedom of expression with the principles of equality and justice. And while a long-term plan of promoting racial harmony is imperative, there’s no justifying any delay to begin making changes.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” the football players said in a statement.

We couldn’t agree more.